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I think it happens when we feel isolated from ourselves. Like when we feel disconnected from our personal senses of comfort and knowledge or when our hearts/bodies/minds aren’t in line with each other.

How to prevent this feeling from happening:

Journal entries

Writing of any kind

Exercise

Art

Reading memoirs of other people with similar experiences

Daily meditation

Cooking

How to deal with it in the moment:

Meditation-style breathing

Focus on one person, object, idea until you feel re-centered

Think about what you can do with your physical body to make it more in tune with your heart and your surroundings – change your body position (stand up or sit down), drink water, have a healthy snack, give someone a hug, untense your shoulders, change your breathing pattern.

Second in a series of posts about my top 25 played songs on iTunes. See the first here.

7. Be Be Your Love – Rachael Yamagata

Everything’s falling, and I am included in thatOh, how I try to be just okayYeah, but all I ever really wantedWas a little piece of you

And everybody’s talking how I, can’t, can’t be your loveBut I want, want, want to be your loveWant to be your love, for real

8. Better Together – Jack Johnson

There is no combination of wordsI could put on the back of a postcardAnd no song that I could sing,
but I can try for your heart
this is our dreams and they are made out of real thingsLike a shoebox of photographs with sepia-toned lovingLove is the answer at least for most of the questions in my heart, likeWhy are we here? And where do we go? And how come it’s so hard?It’s not always easy and sometimes life can be deceivingI’ll tell you one thing, it’s so much better when we’re together

9. I Love the Rain the Most – Joe Purdy

10. Step Up – Samantha Jade

11. Stay – Lisa Loeb

You say I only hear what I want to. You say I talk so all the time so. And I thought what I felt was simple, and I thought that I don’t belong, and now that I am leaving, now I know that I did something wrong ’cause I missed you. Yeah yeah, I missed you. And you say I only hear what I want to: I don’t listen hard, don’t pay attention to the distance that you’re running to anyone, anywhere.I don’t understand if you really care, I’m only hearing negative: no, no, no.

12. Red Right Ankle – The Decemberists

This is the story of the boys who loved you Who love you now and loved you then And some were sweet, some were cold and snuffed you And some just laid around in bed.

Some had crumbled you straight to your knees Did it cruel, did it tenderly Some had crawled their way into your heart To rend your ventricles apart This is the story of the boys who loved you

13. I’d Lie – Taylor Swift

He sees everything black and whiteNever let nobody see him cryI don’t let nobody see me wishing he was mine

14. Look After You – The Fray

There now, steady love, so few come and don’t goWill you, won’t you, be the one I always know?When I’m losing my control, the city spins aroundYou’re the only one who knows, you slow it down

We often talk about privilege as an abstract concept, but it is something that impacts our lives on a daily basis. When I say I have privilege, I’m not always talking about white privilege or cissexual privilege. Sometimes I’m just talking about the basics of my life that I have the privilege of taking for granted. Here are some things I’ve done or had over the course of the weekend that I often take for granted, and that I think many people often take for granted. Along with each point, I’ve included some statistics which might help explain why I believe it is such a privilege. Hopefully this list will make you understand and think about what you have the privilege of taking for granted in your own life.

1. I drank clean, safe water.

“884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people.

3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.

The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.” (source)

2. I ate three meals a day.

26,147: people who died of hunger today

7,865,764: people who have died of hunger so far this year

1,028,272,461: undernourished people in the world right now

(Go here for the source of these statistics on hunger and/or to watch these numbers increase on hunger clocks)

3. I took a hot shower. (see water statistics above)
4. I slept in a bed.

In 2005, an estimated 100 million people worldwide were homeless. (source)

5. I saw my dad. I know and spoke with both my parents.

Today there are estimated over 143 million orphans in the world.” (source)

6. I took birth control.

an estimated 150 million women worldwide cannot get the birth control they desire. (source) What are the implications of this? According to the source listed above, women who have fewer children are generally healthier, and the children they do have are also healthier. So, women who don’t have control of their reproductive health are less healthy, as are their children.

Additionally, “maternal mortality remains the leading cause of death for women of childbearing age—an estimated 500,000 women die each year from pregnancy related causes, with 78,000 deaths resulting from unsafe abortion. Having access to safe, appropriate family planning methods and safe abortion when needed, can make the difference in women’s lives. “

7. I went to class.

Read this article for information on the limits placed on women’s education, and how that impacts women, girls, and their communities.

8. I picked up a prescription, and did not have to pay for it.

Among adults age 18-64 in the United States, at least 20% do not have health insurance. (source)

9. I wore clothes appropriate for cold weather.

This is related to homelessness. Oftentimes, homeless families or individuals do not have the money to buy clothes appropriate for cold weather. This especially affects children.

I couldn’t find statistics on this point, but I think it’s also likely that many people who aren’t homeless, but are still below the national poverty line, cannot always afford proper clothing.

“According to a United Nations study on children in war by Graca Machel, ‘The physical, sexual and emotional violence to which they [children] are exposed shatters their world. War undermines the very foundations of children’s lives, destroying their homes, splintering their communities and breaking down their trust in adults.'” (source)

“Democrats rated the NRA the ‘most effective’ interest group on Capitol Hill; Reuplicans ranked it number two.”

“Of gun owners, 61 percent favor mandatory registration of handguns”

“a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide by nearly five times”

firearms account “for 60 percent of suicide deaths among youth under the age of nineteen.” the claim that, without firearms, kids would just find other ways to accomplish the same thing, may be true. however, in a study, “suicides by gun were successful 92 percent of the time” vs. “carbon monoxide (78 percent), hanging (77 percent), and drowning (66 percent)…lethality of poison (23 percent), drugs (11 percent), cutting with a knife or other sharp object (4 percent).” The point of all those statistics is that, though adolescents might try other ways to commit suicide in the absence of a gun, they would be much less successful. Guns, simply put, are more lethal.

“From 1993 to 2001, an average of 846,000 violent crimes were committed each year with firearms. More crimes were committed with firearms than with knives, baseball bats, or any other products.” Again, this speaks to both the greater lethality of guns, as well as the fact that criminals perceive guns to be more lethal, and therefore use them more frequently.

“The gun homicide rate in the United States is sixty-three times that in England and Wales.”

“About 40 percent of gun sales occur in…transactions” between private citizens; those sellers are not required to run background checks on those to whom they are selling. These private sellers often sell at gun shows, and claim that they are simply selling from a personal collection. The boys in the Columbine shooting obtained their weapons from a gun show.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller prohibits guns from being outlawed. Although this seems like a loss for gun control advocates, what it really means is that the gun lobby cannot argue that smaller instances of gun control (like background checks on everyone who purchases a gun) are just the beginning of an effort to outlaw guns (what a stupid slippery slope argument). Because of the Supreme Court’s ruling, guns cannot be outlawed. So, gun control advocates cannot possibly be aiming for the outlawing of guns.

The argument that gun control will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals – and therefore we should not have gun control – makes no sense. If we were to subscribe to that belief, that we shouldn’t have any criminal laws, because criminals would disobey those laws no matter what. Most (sane) people agree that we need laws against assault, homicide, rape, etc. Those laws exist even though there are clearly people determined to ignore them.

“A study found that denial of a handgun purchase [because of previous felony convictions] is associated with a reduction in risk for later criminal activity of approximately 20 to 30 percent.”

Okay. That’s a lot of facts. And hopefully the next time you argue with someone who opposes gun control, you will be able to pull out these facts/refute their arguments. But actually, I’m only 45 pages into a 200 page book, so look forward to more writing about gun control as I get further into Lethal Logic. In future posts, I will probably imitate the construction of the book, and present each of the gun lobby’s bumper sticker slogans (i.e. “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”) and tell you how the author, Dennis A. Henigan, completely destroys the logic behind those arguments.